In the Brightness of Place

Jeff Malpas is Emeritus Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania in Australia. His many books include Rethinking Dwelling: Heidegger, Place, Architecture and The Fundamental Field: Thought, Poetics, World (coauthored with Kenneth White).

"…[an] excellent new volume … the book is a genuine success, a remarkable study of the later Heidegger that should speak to readers in the environmental humanities, philosophy, critical theory, and more." — H-Net Reviews (H-Environment)"This thought-provoking book will be of significant interest to students of Heidegger and of topology … Highly recommended." — CHOICE"Malpas has long been the leading figure in debates about Heidegger, philosophy and place. Building on that pioneering work, In the Brightness of Place represents an important contribution to several fields, most obviously around place, geography and landscape, but also to literature. The opening chapter on Heidegger's notorious 'Black Notebooks' is particularly impressive. It treats them seriously—philosophically, politically, biographically—and shows how they can shed light on important issues in the reading and assessment of Heidegger." — Stuart Elden, author of The Early Foucault"In this magisterial book, Jeff Malpas lucidly sets forth the full span of Heidegger's later thought. He draws the curtain on a broader vista than one might ever have imagined, ranging from meditations on the "other beginning" and the 'turning' to rethinking emotion and reason. He shows how what might otherwise appear to be a scattered multiplicity of topics gravitates around place understood as a deeply coherent core of Heidegger's mature work. He demonstrates not just the plausibility of this core but just how unrefusable it is when taken seriously. The result is a triumph not only in Heidegger scholarship but in building a case for 'the essentially placed character of being.' The author's luminous prose—which draws on many sources, not only philosophical (ranging from Hume and Kant to Arendt and Benjamin) but poetic and historical—conveys to us a profound truth of the human condition: to be is to be in place." — Edward S. Casey, author of The World on Edge and Turning Emotion Inside Out

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: In the Brightness of Place1. Out of History to Topology2. The "Anthropology" of the World3. On Not Naturalizing Heidegger4. Ontology and Hermeneutics5. Language and Place6. The Refusal of Metaphor7. Finding Ourselves in the World8. Technology and Spatialization9. From Extremity to Releasement10. Where Are We When We Think? Epilogue To the Other BeginningNotesBibliographyIndex